Fundamental Disagreement Research Articles

Economía y libertad. Diálogo entre Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez y Eduardo Nicol

We explain the meaning of a Sanchez Vazquez’s criticism about Nicol, namely, that the philosophy of the latter separates the being of man and his economic base. In accordance with our approach, this criticism expresses a difference of emphasis, not a fundamental disagreement, on the grounds that both philosophers reject the strong economic determinism but instead accept that economy is a necessary condition for the other social structures, and because both Nicol and Sanchez Vazquez agree with the idea that man produces his own being through the creation of distinctive human needs.

The Problems of “Brain Drain” in Russia and Member States of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU)

Among many problems that determine current international migration of population, those that are associated with the phenomenon of “brain drain” are of particular importance and topicality. The authors express a fundamental disagreement with those who try to present this phenomenon as a “mutually beneficial process for all countries”, as well as with those Russian authors who identify “brain drain” with “internal transition of people from scientific sphere to real production, business and social sphere” indicating this transition as “internal brain drain”. Particular attention is paid to two modern features, namely: “brain drain” under conditions of demographic crisis and “brain drain” between member states of the EAEU.

Deciphering the Shift in America's South China Sea Policy

The tensions resulting from the territorial and maritime jurisdictional disputes between China and five Southeast Asian countries--Brunei, Indonesia, (1) Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam--have for years dominated the headlines on the South China Sea and defined the lens through which the issue is seen. While the United States has at times expressed its concerns over incidents in which destabilizing actions occurred, these developments had minimal impact on the US grand strategy of preventing the rise of a potential hegemon in the Western Pacific. Prior to China's push to enlarge the features it occupies in the Spratly Islands, US officials largely viewed the sovereignty dispute as a matter to be resolved between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and were careful in framing the issue as a diplomatic rather than a military challenge. While Washington had always emphasized its commitment to, and the need for all sides to respect, freedom of navigation and overflight and the unimpeded flow of global commerce, it has never enunciated in unequivocal terms what the United States would do to uphold these principles. This position would change as a result of US assessments of the implications of China's artificial island building beginning in late 2013. The United States is not a party to the South China Sea dispute. Yet it is a party to a disagreement and contest with a rising China on the meaning of freedom of the seas--a principle that is central to US core interests--and what the regional security landscape of the Asia-Pacific ought to look like in future years. Understanding the crux of this contest is important for grasping the role that the South China Sea plays in US grand strategy, and factors that can lead to substantive changes in US policy on the issue, or lack thereof. This article begins by deciphering what the United States views as its core interests in the South China Sea that have the potential to either support or upend US grand strategy. It posits that the United States has two fundamental and enduring core interests in the South China Sea: defending its view on freedom of the seas, and maintaining the naval and air superiority of the United States in the Western Pacific. The article moves on to offer an overview of America's South China Sea policy in the context of the US rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region, and is based on the premise that US officials began to devote significantly more attention and resources to the issue as a result of greater US focus on regional issues, especially with regard to Southeast Asia. This section also sheds light on the evolving nature of the disagreement between Beijing and Washington in light of the US rebalance. It presents a context for understanding how China's artificial island building, if strategically deployed, can be a nexus between these two sets of disputes, with the of causing the fundamental disagreement between the United States and China to spill over into the South China Sea. The following section elaborates official US views on China's reclamation activities and its implications for US core interests and grand strategy in the Asia Pacific. It seeks to capture the shift in US strategy on the South China Sea. This article concludes that the United States has responded with a new, active strategy that aims to: first, deter China from taking further actions at its reclaimed features that would alter the existing military balance of power in the region; and second, make it pay a net effect for its behaviour--should it continue to pursue an aggressive course of action--by engaging more forcibly with Southeast Asian partners. The final section outlines how the new shift in US policy has manifested itself to date, and analyzes the extent of its effectiveness as of this writing towards China's actions and for US core interests. This article seeks to capture a US-centric view of the evolving nature of the South China Sea dispute in relation to its grand strategy. …

Moral Realism, Fundamental Moral Disagreement, and Moral Reliability

Moral Realism, Fundamental Moral Disagreement, and Moral Reliability

Anodal tDCS to Right Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Facilitates Performance for Novice Jazz Improvisers but Hinders Experts.

Research on creative cognition reveals a fundamental disagreement about the nature of creative thought, specifically, whether it is primarily based on automatic, associative (Type-1) or executive, controlled (Type-2) processes. We hypothesized that Type-1 and Type-2 processes make differential contributions to creative production that depend on domain expertise. We tested this hypothesis with jazz pianists whose expertise was indexed by the number of public performances given. Previous fMRI studies of musical improvisation have reported that domain expertise is characterized by deactivation of the right-dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (r-DLPFC), a brain area associated with Type-2 executive processing. We used anodal, cathodal, and sham transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) applied over r-DLPFC with the reference electrode on the contralateral mastoid (1.5 mA for 15 min, except for sham) to modulate the quality of the pianists' performances while they improvised over chords with drum and bass accompaniment. Jazz experts rated each improvisation for creativity, esthetic appeal, and technical proficiency. There was no main effect of anodal or cathodal stimulation on ratings compared to sham; however, a significant interaction between anodal tDCS and expertise emerged such that stimulation benefitted musicians with less experience but hindered those with more experience. We interpret these results as evidence for a dual-process model of creativity in which novices and experts differentially engage Type-1 and Type-2 processes during creative production.

US–Russia Confrontation and a New Global Balance

Although the US–Russia relations are hardly the central axis of contemporary international relations, the systemic confrontation between Moscow and Washington, which began in 2014, will become a decisive factor for the emerging international order. This confrontation was caused by factors much deeper than a mere clash of national interests in Ukraine or Syria. It came as a result of their fundamental disagreement about the basic rules and norms of international relations and a clash of the visions of international order which Moscow and Washington have been promoting since the end of the Cold War. Moreover, this confrontation is a part—and currently the epicentre—of a broader rift between the US and major non-Western centres of power about the nature of a post-hegemonic international order. It put an end to the post-Cold War period of the International System development, and reflects unwillingness of the non-Western power centres to accept the US’ global leadership, and US attempts to restore it. Since none of the sides is ready for one-way compromise and all bet on the weakening of the opponent, continuation of the US–Russia confrontation will deepen the split in the Atlantic and Pacific, and intensify the general tendency of global governance bifurcation and emergence of a global divide into two major political and economic communities.

Fundamental disagreement

We document a novel set of facts about disagreement among professional forecasters: (1) forecasters disagree at all horizons, including the long run; (2) the term structure of disagreement is downward sloping for real output growth, relatively flat for inflation, and upward sloping for the federal funds rate; (3) disagreement is time varying at all horizons. We propose a generalized model of imperfect information that can jointly explain these facts. We further use the term structure of disagreement to show that the monetary policy rule perceived by professional forecasters features a high degree of interest-rate smoothing and time variation in the intercept.

What Is Common in Accounts of Common Ground?

Tenenberg, Roth, and Socha's paper "From I-awareness to we-awareness in CSCW" is, or should be, of special significance to those in the CSCW and HCI communities with more than a passing interest in the theoretical issues that underpin our work. It can be argued, and I would be a proponent of this view, that fundamental intellectual disagreements too seldom get an airing in our community, perhaps because it is in large part conference driven. Because of this, underlying perspectival disagreements can appear rather arcane. One of the great merits of the contributions to this special issue, I hope and believe, is that they will appear less so after careful reading.

A People's War on Poverty: Urban Politics and Grassroots Activists in Houston

In A People's War on Poverty, Wesley G. Phelps investigates the on-the-ground implementation of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty during the 1960s and 1970s. He argues that the fluid interaction between federal policies, urban politics, and grassroots activists created a significant site of conflict over the meaning of American democracy and the rights of citizenship that historians have largely overlooked. In Houston in particular, the War on Poverty spawned fierce political battles that revealed fundamental disagreements over what democracy meant, how far it should extend, and who should benefit from it. Many of the programme's implementers took seriously the federal mandate to empower the poor as they pushed for a more participatory form of democracy that would include more citizens in the political, cultural, and economic life of the city. At the centre of this book are the vitally important but virtually forgotten grassroots activists who administered federal War on Poverty programmes, including church ministers, federal programme volunteers, students, local administrators, civil rights activists, and the poor themselves. The moderate Great Society liberalism that motivated the architects of the federal programmes certainly galvanised local antipoverty activists in Houston. However, their antipoverty philosophy was driven further by prophetic religious traditions and visions of participatory democracy and community organising championed by the New Left and iconoclastic figures like Saul Alinsky. By focusing on these local actors, Phelps shows that grassroots activists in Houston were influenced by a much more diverse set of intellectual and political traditions, fueling their efforts to expand the meaning of democracy. Ultimately, this episode in Houston's history reveals both the possibilities and the limits of urban democracy in the twentieth century.

The emergence of Applied Physiology within the discipline of Physiology.

Despite the availability and utilization of the physiology textbooks authored by Albrecht von Haller during the 18th century that heralded the modern age of physiology, not all physicians or physiologists were satisfied with its presentation, contents, or application to medicine. Initial reasons were fundamental disagreements between the "mechanists," represented by Boerhaave, Robinson, and von Haller, and the "vitalists," represented by the faculty and graduates of the Montpellier School of Medicine in France, notably, Bordeu and Barthez. Subsequently, objections originated from Europe, United Kingdom, and the United States in publications that focused not only on the teaching of physiology to medical and secondary students, but on the specific applications of the content of physiology to medicine, health, hygiene, pathology, and chronic diseases. At the turn of the 20th century, texts began to appear with applied physiology in their titles and in 1926, physician Samson Wright published a textbook entitled Applied Physiology that was intended for both medical students and the medical profession. Eleven years later, physicians Best and Taylor published The Physiological Basis of Medical Practice: A University of Toronto Texbook in Applied Physiology Although both sets of authors defined the connection between applied physiology and physiology, they failed to define the areas of physiology that were included within applied physiology. This was accomplished by the American Physiological Society (APS) Publications Committee in 1948 with the publication of the Journal of Appplied Physiology, that stated the word "applied" would broadly denote human physiology whereas the terms stress and environment would broadly include work, exercise, plus industrial, climatic and social factors. NIH established a study section (SS) devoted to applied physiology in 1964 which remained active until 2001 when it became amalgamated into other SSs. Before the end of the 20th century when departments were changing their titles to reflect a stronger science orientation, many established laboratories and offered degree programs devoted to Applied Physiology. We concluded that Applied Physiology has been an important contributor to the discipline of physiology while becoming an integral component of APS.

How the Invisible Hand is Supposed to Adjust the Natural Thermostat: A Guide for the Perplexed

Mainstream climate economics takes global warming seriously, but perplexingly concludes that the optimal economic policy is to almost do nothing about it. This conclusion can be traced to just a few “normative” assumptions, over which there exists fundamental disagreement amongst economists. This paper explores two axes of this disagreement. The first axis (“market vs. regulation”) measures faith in the invisible hand to adjust the natural thermostat. The second axis expresses differences in views on the efficiency and equity implications of climate action. The two axes combined lead to a classification of conflicting approaches in climate economics. The variety of approaches does not imply a post-modern “anything goes”, as the contradictions between climate and capitalism cannot be wished away.

The Censor as Reader: Censorial Responses to Bodin's Methodus in Counter-Reformation Italy (1587–1607)

SUMMARYThis essay investigates censorial responses to Jean Bodin's Methodus (1566) in Counter-Reformation Italy, using evidence from Italian libraries and archives to shed new light on the process that led to the inclusion of the work in the Roman Expurgatory Index of 1607. By examining the diverse, and sometimes conflicting, opinions that Catholic censors expressed on Bodin's text and the ‘errors’ it contained, the essay shows that even a relatively cohesive ‘reading community’ such as that of Counter-Reformation censors could nurture fundamental disagreement in evaluating the content and dangerousness of a book, as well as in devising appropriate countermeasures. Censors often made sense of the same texts in utterly different ways, based not only on their own intellectual interests and backgrounds, but also on the different interpretive strategies that they adopted. In light of this fact, the article suggests that early modern censorship should be seen less as a purely repressive practice than as a peculiar type of readership, characterised (as are all forms of readership) by instability, controversy and active ‘meaning-making’.

Discrimination and Disrespect (Introduction)

Hardly anyone disputes that discrimination can be a grave moral wrong. Yet this consensus masks fundamental disagreements about what makes something discrimination, as well as precisely why (and hence when) acts of discrimination are wrong. This book aims to develop systematic answers to those two questions. It offers a philosophical account of what discrimination is, and a moral theory to explain what is characteristically wrong with it.

Religious Harmony and Peaceful Co-Existence : A Quranic Perspective

Islam promotes religious harmony and peaceful co-existence not only among the Muslims, but also among the people of other faiths. As established by Islām, it is important for every Muslim to tolerate other religions, and to follow the policy of living peacefully with other nations, religions etc., despite fundamental disagreements. This article is aimed to explore how the Holy Qur᾽ān appeals to Muslims to engage in religious tolerance and harmony with the people of other religions in order to bring a true manifestation of peace and brotherhood in diversity and respect for each other’s rights on the basis of their common humanity. Hence, the article focuses on the Quranic principles for religious harmony and peaceful co-existence among the people, such as the equality of mankind, mutual understanding, cooperation, and freedom of religion and thought. The study concludes by highlighting the importance of the Quranic view of peace and coexistence which is interwoven with the universal moral discourse that unites all human beings.

The Vatican and Mussolini’s Italy

This essay reviews a new history by Lucia Ceci of Italo-Vatican relations during the Fascist period, and evaluates its contribution to the vast but often polemical literature on the subject of Church–state relations in modern Italy. Ceci offers a detailed, sophisticated analysis that focuses specifically on leadership and decision-making in the Fascist regime and the Vatican respectively. Her argument that the Vatican’s relations with Fascist Italy were conditioned by a strategic choice to maintain diplomatic relations in exchange for autonomy in the state and civil society, while compelling, makes some contradictory and unconvincing claims. Ultimately, what is needed is a conceptual framework that can account for the complex reality of a relationship characterized by points of mutual interest and complementarity but also fundamental disagreement and open conflict.

Dis/chord: nuclear disfunction in diminished 4ths

dis/chord:nuclear disfunction in diminished 4ths Jade Sylvan (bio) 1. ( ) of July Somewhere in Indiana my parents are grilling hamburgers and hot dogs. I don’t need to call them to know this. They’re in their backyard, just over an acre of trim grass. The Midwestern heat is a rough beast, its gaze blank and pitiless as the sun. My parents are drinking vodka martinis with three olives each. I know exactly the intonation in my father’s voice as he asks, You want onions on that dog? I heard it every summer for eighteen years. My parents married right out of college. Six years later one girl and two-and-a-half years after that they had one boy. 2. ( ) Dimension I share a bed with two women. Occasionally more. I’ve stopped counting my tattoos. People call me sir as often as ma’am. I live in a room in the city. I spend days writing poems and nights at the cabaret. I’m thirty-one. My parents do not understand my life. My brother married a woman right out of college. It’s six years later and they just had their first baby. A girl. My parents understand. I could have married a man right out of college. There was no temporal pivot, no eureka when everything became clear and I rejected their straight and narrow for my queer and wide-open. An infinite number of invisible choices carried me this far away from my family. [End Page 249] 3. ( ) Wall My father is two-and-a-half years younger than his sister. They lost his father when my father was eighteen. My father has wanted to recreate the perfect family he feels like he lost ever since. When my father married my mother, he told her they would have one girl and then one boy. When my mother saw my brother was a boy she cried because she knew that meant she couldn’t have any more children. Half-life is a misnomer. Nuclear decay creates completely new elements. These elements are called, “daughter elements.” My therapist is impressed by my mother and me. We can argue about lifestyle and values, but never forget our bond. “Most people can’t step outside of fundamental disagreements while they’re having them the way you two can.” I told her it was something we had to learn if we wanted to go on loving each other. It was clear from the time I was seven that my parents and I would disagree on almost everything. 4. ( ) Coming My two partners and I are going to have a baby. The sperm has been offered by a dear friend. The plan is in motion. My father and mother are grilling hamburgers and hot dogs, drinking martinis. Somewhere in some other dimension there is the plan for me that they had. I/she am/is married with two children, one girl and two-and-a-half years later one boy. Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold. I will not recreate my father’s family. I will create my own. I move my heavy thighs and call my mother. She picks up and says, “Hello?” I answer with a voice that is half me and half her. I do not slouch as I make my revelation. I tell her the good news. [End Page 250] Jade Sylvan Jade Sylvan (they/them/their), called a “risqué queer icon” by the Boston Globe, is an award-winning author, poet, screenwriter, producer, and performing artist heavily rooted in the literary and performance community of Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts. They wrote a book called Kissing Oscar Wilde and are currently writing sci-fiburlesque theater and supernatural nun smut. Copyright © 2016 Jade Sylvan

Two Conceptions of Practical Reasons

I discuss and compare Joseph Raz’s and Christine Korsgaard’s accounts of reasons for action. One fundamental disagreement separating the two approaches is the role that they assign to two central features of practical deliberation: Korsgaard assigns priority to identity-constituting practical principles, whereas for Raz reasons are the fundamental normative units. In the course of this comparison, two claims are defended: (1) Taking-up a realist stance vis-à-vis one’s reasons is a non-optional feature of one’s first-personal deliberative standpoint. This remains true even if this renders the workings of an agent’s reasons analogous to a placebo. (2) The motivational aspect of an agent’s reasons should not be conceived along causalist lines. Exploiting a thought by Hegel, I discuss an alternative conception of reasons’ temporal genesis and force—i.e., one that allows reasons for a particular action to emerge at a later point.

Method of LDL cholesterol measurement influences classification of LDL cholesterol treatment goals: clinical research study.

Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) has been clearly associated with the risk of developing coronary heart disease. The best and most convenient method for determining LDL-C has come under increased scrutiny in recent years. We present comparisons of the Friedewald calculated LDL-C (C-LDL-C) and direct LDL-C (D-LDL-C) using 3 different homogenous assays. This highlights differences between the 2 methods of LDL-C measurement and how this affects the classification of samples into different LDL-C treatment goals as determined by the National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III guidelines thus potentially affecting treatment strategies. Lipid profiles of a total of 2208 clinic patients were retrieved from the Central Arkansas VA Healthcare System clinical laboratory database. Samples studied were of 1-week period during the 3 periods studied: 2000 (period 1), 2002 (period 2), and 2005 (period 3). Different homogenous assays for D-LDL-C measurement were used for each of the 3 periods. There is a fundamental disagreement between D-LDL-C and C-LDL-C, although Pearson correlation coefficients are 0.93, 0.97, and 0.98 for periods 1, 2, and 3, respectively. Using the model for period 1, when C-LDL-C is 70 mg/dL, the predicted D-LDL-C is 95 mg/dL (36% higher). The differences between C-LDL-C and predicted D-LDL-C progressively decrease at higher LDL-C cut points. In the assay used in period 3, there are 290 samples with D-LDL-C values between 100 and 130 mg/dL. Of these, only 182 samples show agreement with C-LDL-C values, whereas 90 samples with a D-LDL-C in the 100- to 130-mg/dL range are in the 70- to 100-mg/dL range using the C-LDL-C assay. Although the κ statistics suggests the LDL-C measures have relatively high levels of agreement, the significant generalized McNemar tests (P < 0.01) provide additional evidence of disagreement between C-LDL-C and D-LDL-C during all the 3 periods. Our results highlight D-LDL-C measurements using 3 different assays during 3 different periods. In all assays, there is a substantial lack of agreement between D-LDL-C and C-LDL-C, which, in most cases, resulted in higher D-LDL-C values than C-LDL-C. This leads to clinically significant misclassification of patient's LDL-C to a different LDL-C treatment goal, which would potentially result in more drug usage, thus exposing patients to more potential adverse effects and at a much greater cost with little evidence of benefit.

Guides and Guardians: Judiciaries in Times of Transition

The decades since the end of the Cold War have seen a remarkable convergence of global thinking about the role of law in development and during post-conflict transition. There now exists a surprising lack of fundamental disagreement on the desirability of the rule of law and the particular set of institutions deemed necessary for its maintenance, not the least of which are independent judiciaries. Indeed, the importance of the rule of law and of effective governance institutions as the preconditions for economic prosperity and political stability have become so universally accepted that at times they are presented as received wisdom no longer needing approbatory argument. The resulting academic discourse conceives of judiciaries primarily as guardians of an existing constitutional order, their task being to define and develop this order and use it to protect individual rights by measuring state action against it. In a transitional process, however, the very creation of a new constitutional order will be necessary, with diverse political actors severely contesting its most elementary parts, and often against a background of exceedingly weak governmental ability.Under these conditions, the judiciary, especially at the highest level, cannot content itself to measure state action against an abstract yardstick. Instead, judiciaries must also assume the role of guides offering direction and reassurance to hostile societal actors about the transition process as such.

Rancièrean Atomism: Clarifying the Debate between Jacques Rancière and Alain Badiou

In the late 1970s and the 1980s, a number of radical left political theorists focused their philosophical attention on the relevance of ancient atomism, revitalizing a tradition that went back to Karl Marx's work on his dissertation. This essay looks at the uses of atomism by two thinkers in particular, Jacques Rancière and Alain Badiou, in order to see how their discussions of and references to ancient materialism help to shed light on their fundamental disagreements about the nature of community and equality.First, this paper argues that what Badiou and Rancière most obviously share in their assessments of atomism is a negative judgment regarding the post-swerve constitution of the world, while what most obviously distinguishes their positions is their differing judgments regarding the preswerve rain of the atoms in the void (which Badiou assesses negatively and Rancière positively). Becoming clear both about how Badiou and Rancière respond to what comes before and after the atomistic swerve helps to clarify an implicit response on Rancière’s part to what has become Badiou’s chief objection to Rancière’s political theory. Second, this paper argues that the fact that Badiou assesses both what comes before and what comes after the swerve as negative, while Rancière assesses only what comes after the swerve as negative (because he assesses the pre-swerve rain of the atoms in the void positively), makes clear that their most essential point of difference concerns the status of the swerve that mediates between before and after. Working through the complexities of Badiou’s analysis of the swerve and uncovering Rancière’s extremely subtle analysis of the swerve helps to clarify a major aspect of what has become Rancière’s chief criticism of Badiou’s conception of philosophy.